About WaterWiki

The IWA WaterWiki aims to provide a platform for the global water community to interact and share knowledge online.

The site will be a reference for all areas of water, wastewater and environmental science and management. This is the place for water professionals worldwide to interact, share knowledge and increase understanding.

To find out more about the incentives of registering on WaterWiki, click on Why Register?

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative website that everybody can read and anyone can edit. In order to edit the WaterWiki you must first complete a simple registration process. The content of articles is contributed by the users themselves and appears live for everyone to see instantaneously. If you are reading an article and want to make a change, just click “Edit” and you can change the article. Click “Save changes” and your addition or correction can be seen by everyone. If you want to submit a new article on your favourite topic, just click “Create Article”. “Save changes” and the article is available for the world to see. There is no technical knowledge required – just follow the instructions. If you can use a website then you can contribute to the WaterWiki. But please note that all submissions should be in English. If you have any problems, please consult our Help section.

The IWA WaterWiki aims to be THE online reference point for water, wastewater and environmental science and management issues. Alongside this it provides a wider set of features that will enable community discussion and interaction:

More than an encyclopedia

This is the space for reference articles on all areas of water science, technology, management and development issues. Here you can share knowledge by creating or contributing to an article covering an issue in your area of expertise. All contributions major or minor are welcome across all areas of interest in water, wastewater and environmental related fields. Find, correct, edit and expand articles already existing on the WaterWiki or create a new article on the topic of your choice. Tag an article with the appropriate category and it will be found by all users interested in that area of the subject. Flag an article with an attribute to quickly highlight an issue that needs attention.

All submissions should be in English.

A unique feature of Wikis is that the page the user views is usually the result of several (or many!) authors. The full history of changes to an article is accessible so you can easily trace the development through each edit to the article’s current state, comparing changes and rolling back to a previous version with a few simple clicks. Unlike Wikipedia, where authorship can be anonymous, with the IWA WaterWiki every edit of an article is linked to a unique registered user. Full names are also recorded on the front page of articles so you can easily see who contributed and also be recognized for your own contribution. Click on the contributors name to access their unique user profile.

Behind each reference article page is a place to discuss the content of that article. Here you can leave comments for the authors of the article, suggest corrections, highlight areas for expansion or improvement or present your own contribution for discussion before adding it to the article itself. The Discussion area is in a threaded ‘bulletin board’ format designed to allow conversation to develop and questions to be raised. Each post is linked to a user name and profile so you know who it is you are talking to.

Another useful feature of the IWA WaterWiki is the Organization Profiles space. Here you can create a short profile for an organization you belong to describing your organization, its function and role. You can provide contact details and links to your organization’s resources on the web – or to related articles on the Wiki. This feature allows you to create a presence on the WaterWiki for your organization, department, research project or working group that will highlight their work to the water community.

The IWA WaterWiki is free for everyone to read as an information resource for the global water community. In order to contribute or edit articles however you will need to complete a simple registration process requiring only your full name and a valid email address. This will create a User Profile for you on the site. This can show as little as your name, but if you wish to create a profile for the community to see you can add your title, position and contact details. Describe your role or research interests, attach a C.V., and link yourself to an Organization Profile on the site. Registered users of the Wiki can contact other users through the site messaging system.

The IWA WaterWiki features a Forum where registered users can have discussions themed around topics (rather than on specific articles). This is also the space to talk about upcoming conferences and events, calls for papers, to post links to useful online resources and to ask questions. There will be a category devoted to the WaterWiki site itself so that users can express their opinion on the site as it develops.

The IWA WaterWiki makes it easy to stay up to date with changes on the site. Watch for new edits to an article to which you have contributed, for new articles in your area of interest or for new posts in a forum conversation you’ve been following. Notifications are sent directly to your web browser, allowing you to see the latest contribution or jump back in to the conversation with just a few clicks.

Contribute

All contributions major or minor will be welcome. You can help the WaterWiki grow by adapting your own articles for inclusion on the Wiki; selecting and adapting existing Wikipedia articles to bring over to the IWA WaterWiki; registering to watch articles and topic areas and reviewing new edits; and by talking to your colleagues about adapting their work for inclusion on the Wiki.

All submissions should be in English.

If you have any questions, comments or ideas for the site or want to get involved further, please contact us.